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Retreat
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March

Retreat Online

Sunday, March 24 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Calming the Restless Mind

4 CE Credits. Everyone wants to be calm and peaceful. Our restlessness and agitation stem from an untrained, reactive mind and a lack of clear perception of what's happening in our mind and body from moment to moment. During this retreat, we will train our hearts and minds to find a calm abiding in the present moment.

Howard Cohn

Howard Cohn

Retreat Online

Saturday, March 30 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Feeding the Creative Fire Through Dharma Practice

As we look outward into the world and inward to our own hearts, it becomes apparent that we are living in the infancy of our species’ human potential to dream of a world free from suffering. Our world needs fresh eyes, brightened by the goodness that resides within. During this day we will practice silent and guided meditation. Through visual imagery, talks, and journaling, we will nourish our capacity to rewire conditioned perspectives that smother the fire of imagination.

Amana Brembry Johnson

Amana Brembry Johnson

Retreat Online

Sunday, March 31 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Meditation to Develop Concentration and Serenity for a Chaotic World

5 CE Credits. In concentration and serenity meditation (samatha), we return awareness to one meditation object to the exclusion of everything else, unifying the mind stream. This process of purifying the mind reveals with heightened clarity the habitual patterns that cause us to suffer. Throughout this process, a laser-like awareness can develop, leading to peace, stillness, joy, as well as the meditative absorptions known as jhānas. Topics include: the practice path; the relationship between samatha and vipassanā, and working with striving and hindrances.

Tina Rasmussen

Tina Rasmussen

April

Retreat On-Land Hybrid

Saturday, April 6 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM

Not-Self: Not Taking Ourselves Personally 

Liberation won't be found in trying to create the perfect personality, because it isn't the personality that realizes liberation. Using the Buddha's teachings on not-self as a contemplative strategy, rather than a doctrine to believe in, is a way to freedom in the heart/mind. This daylong will explore teachings on not-self and how to bring them into present moment experience. The day will include periods of sitting and walking meditation, as well as Dharma reflections and Q&A.

Ajahn Karunadhammo

Ajahn Karunadhammo

Retreat Online Hybrid

Saturday, April 6 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM

Not-Self: Not Taking Ourselves Personally

Liberation won't be found in trying to create the perfect personality, because it isn't the personality that realizes liberation. Using the Buddha's teachings on not-self as a contemplative strategy, rather than a doctrine to believe in, is a way to freedom in the heart/mind. This daylong will explore teachings on not-self and how to bring them into present moment experience. The day will include periods of sitting and walking meditation, as well as Dharma reflections and Q&A.

Ajahn Karunadhammo

Ajahn Karunadhammo

Retreat On-Land

April 7 - April 13, 2024 Sunday - Saturday | 6 nights

Insight Meditation Retreat

This is a silent retreat designed especially for those relatively new to the practices of Insight Meditation (vipassanā). The retreat includes systematic instructions on vipassanā meditation—both stillness and moving—as well as lovingkindness practices, meetings with teachers, and evening talks highlighting the central teachings of the Buddha and their practical application to our lives.

DaRa Williams

DaRa Williams

Tuere Sala

Tuere Sala

Noliwe Alexander

Noliwe Alexander

Bart van Melik

Bart van Melik

Monica Magtoto

Monica Magtoto

Retreat Online

Sunday, April 7 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness & Freedom

No one is immune to the different seasons of life. Yet we are often ill-prepared to navigate these natural ups and downs without undue pain and suffering. In her twelfth book, Real Life, New York Times bestselling author Sharon Salzberg contemplates the skills needed to traverse the larger cycles of life, drawing from over 40 years of experience in the Buddhist tradition. Join Sharon and conversation partner Scott Barry Kaufman to talk about the themes from the book.

Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg

Scott Barry Kaufman

Scott Barry Kaufman

Retreat On-Land

April 14 - April 20, 2024 Sunday - Saturday | 6 nights

Illuminating the Beautiful Qualities of the Heart

Open to All Self-identified Women of the Black African Diaspora. There is a deep well of vibrant, intuitive knowing that is alive in the bone memory of Black Women’s bodies. In practicing silent meditation both indoors and in nature, this retreat for self-identified Black Women includes Dharma talks, embodiment practices, teacher meetings, and time for reflective, intentional rest to nourish the mind, heart, and body. Through guided practices of self-love, compassion, and deep connection to nature, we will illuminate the heart of strength and tenderness that resides within us all.

Amana Brembry Johnson

Amana Brembry Johnson

Konda Mason

Konda Mason

DaRa Williams

DaRa Williams

Ruth King

Ruth King

Richelle Evelyn Donigan

Richelle Evelyn Donigan

Retreat On-Land

April 21 - April 27, 2024 Sunday - Saturday | 6 nights

Finding Refuge, Finding Home: A Retreat in Nature

In the storms of our lives we need refuge, nourishment, and support—a place to replenish our tired bodies and troubled hearts. When the Buddha taught meditation, his first instruction was to sit under a tree. Together, we will practice in the age-old tradition of being outside in the company of the natural world. We will explore tapping into the stillness and dynamism that surrounds us in nature, which teaches us about balance and delight as refuge in our daily lives.

Susie Harrington

Susie Harrington

Mark Coleman

Mark Coleman

Yong Oh

Yong Oh

bruni dávila

bruni dávila

Liz Powell

Liz Powell

Thimo Wittich

Thimo Wittich

Retreat Online

Sunday, April 21 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

BIPOC Grief: Naming the Unnameable and Exploring the Many Faces of Grief and Loss

Open to all self-identified BIPOC. During this daylong retreat for the BIPOC community, we’ll explore the many faces of grief and loss, including individual, collective and systemic. How do we learn to be with, even embrace, grief without either bypassing it or being overwhelmed by it? Participants are invited to co-create a safer container in which to practice meditation, engage in small and large group sharing, attend Dharma talks, and give our grief a space to exist and be expressed.

Mushim Ikeda

Mushim Ikeda

Damali Robertson

Damali Robertson

Retreat Online

April 27 - April 28, 2024 Saturday - Sunday | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Write to Wake Up: Creative Writing and Meditation

Unleash your stories, stir your imagination, and honor the wild heart of your life through an immersive weekend of creative writing and meditation. Together, we’ll practice writing in a way that helps us wake up. We’ll settle our minds and open our hearts through meditation in movement and stillness, so we can write from a deeper place. Through sharing our stories with each other, we’ll connect with our common humanity.

Anne Cushman

Anne Cushman

Retreat On-Land

April 28 - May 4, 2024 Sunday - Saturday | 6 nights

Exploring the Relationship between the Awakening Heart and Unentangled Knowing

At this time of increasing global crisis, the relationship between letting go and trusting a heart that knows can resource us in profound and unexpected ways. On this retreat, we will enter into Noble Silence, invoking our intention to increase our intimacy with this primordial relationship between embodied knowing and embodied care. Our intention is to support you as you tenderly meet each moment with care. Together, we will weave Dharma teachings with stillness, movement, ritual, sound, and song.

Erin Selover

Erin Selover

Monica Magtoto

Monica Magtoto

Tara Marchant

Tara Marchant

May

Retreat Online

May 3 - May 4, 2024 Friday - Saturday | Times variable - see details

From a Crisis Meditation Practice to a Sacred One

Oftentimes we find ourselves running to our altars when we need saving or when we are at a loss. In this weekend time together, we will explore ways to move from a crisis-oriented meditation practice to one that is a sacred way of life. How can we attune our habitual meditation activity to ancestral wisdom? Discover how to transform your sitting practice into one that consistently honors the ancestors, the land, and all sentient beings.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Retreat On-Land

May 5 - May 10, 2024 Sunday - Friday | 5 nights

With the World on Fire, Embody the Eightfold Path

The Buddha offered the Noble Eightfold Path as a way to direct our lives away from entanglement and towards true freedom. As we find ourselves moving into an increasing ecological crisis and witnessing its impact on the planet and our lives, the Buddha’s teaching becomes ever more relevant and essential. During this retreat, Ayya Ananadabodhi, Ayya Santacitta, and Ayya Santussika will offer teachings on this theme with an emphasis on bringing the path to the whole of our experience.

Ayya Anandabodhi

Ayya Anandabodhi

Ayya Santacitta

Ayya Santacitta

Ayya Santussika

Ayya Santussika

Emily Carpenter

Emily Carpenter

Retreat On-Land

May 11 - May 16, 2024 Saturday - Thursday | 5 nights

Spring Insight Retreat

The Buddha suggested that we have underestimated the capacity of our heart. Retreat helps us to remember. In mindfulness meditation, we practice resting, looking deeply, and knowing moment by moment what it's like to be human. The more deeply we look, the more reason we have to love. Together, we'll sit in the refuge provided by a 2,600-year legacy of wisdom and kindness. In silence, we come to know the preciousness of our life and the poignancy of the human condition.

Matthew Brensilver

Matthew Brensilver

Cara Lai

Cara Lai

Brian Lesage

Brian Lesage

Retreat Online

Saturday, May 11 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM

All About Love: Celebrating Bell Hooks

We all want love. Throughout this retreat, we will explore together how love can be when it is expressed in conjunction with the qualities of the Four Divine States of Equanimity, Kindness, Compassion, and Inclusive Joy. This daylong retreat includes short readings from bell hooks, who puts forward fierce feminist social criticism that invites us to transform our challenges into strength in order to manifest the love and caring we want in our lives.

Rev. Liên Shutt

Rev. Liên Shutt

Retreat Online

Sunday, May 12 10:00 AM - 2:30 PM

Embodying the Archetypal Buddhist Feminine: A Refuge for Inspiration and Equanimity

Open to all self-identified Women. Join us on Mother’s Day to celebrate the archetypal Buddhist feminine, with a focus on Prajna Paramita, Green Tara, and others. By aligning ourselves with aspects of different sacred archetypes, we'll explore how they can live in our body and offer a sense of equanimity and inspiration. This day is not only for mothers, but for all who identify as women and want to sit in the sacred space of embodying our heart’s deepest expression of the divine feminine.

Grace Fisher

Grace Fisher

Retreat Online

Sunday, May 19 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Vesak 2024: Celebrating the Buddha and the Triple Gem

Vesak is the Buddhist holiday honoring the birth, awakening, and death of the Buddha. To honor Vesak 2024 (year 2568 in the Buddhist calendar), we will share simple chants from the Forest Saṅgha and Mahāyāna traditions, learn a meditation on the qualities of the Buddha called Buddhānussati, and and celebrate the presence of the Dharma in our lives and in the world. All are welcome.

Sean Oakes

Sean Oakes

Retreat On-Land

May 26 - May 30, 2024 Sunday - Thursday | 4 nights

The Body as Nature, Nature in the Body: Dharma and Our Connection to the Earth

Our body can be a vehicle for liberation in this life, containing all we need to wake up. Yet we may not know how to relate to the body in the ways that can support this kind of freedom. Throughout this retreat, we will practice connecting to our body with loving awareness while recognizing ourselves as an essential part of nature. Together, we will engage in noble silence as we are nurtured and supported by the land at Spirit Rock.

Anushka Fernandopulle

Anushka Fernandopulle

Will Kabat-Zinn

Will Kabat-Zinn

Cara Lai

Cara Lai

June

Retreat On-Land

June 7 - June 14, 2024 Friday - Friday | 7 nights

Insight, Awareness, and the Nine Bodies of Consciousness

This retreat offers a new style of Insight Meditation that employs the “Nine Bodies of Consciousness” map. The focus of this practice is on developing mindfulness of the felt sense of embodied experience, and directly experiencing the various capacities of consciousness, including intuitive awareness, which fosters the natural arising of insight. This distinct teaching style will be unfamiliar to first-time “Nine Bodies Insight” practitioners, and potential participants are strongly encouraged to listen to guided meditations beforehand.

Dana DePalma

Dana DePalma

Phillip Moffitt

Phillip Moffitt

Tuere Sala

Tuere Sala

Alex Haley

Alex Haley

Ying Chen

Ying Chen

Retreat On-Land

June 15 - June 21, 2024 Saturday - Friday | 6 nights

The Magic of Awareness

The paradox of awareness is profound and yet very simple. It can’t be described because it has no objective qualities and no limitations. It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, good nor bad. We will practice with this quality of awareness through formal and informal meditation. Once we know how to pay attention, it can be experienced in an instant. When we learn to reside in that liberated mind, we find the very thing we have been seeking all along.

James Baraz

James Baraz

Anam Thubten

Anam Thubten

Trudy Goodman

Trudy Goodman

Jill White Lindsay

Jill White Lindsay

Retreat On-Land

June 22 - June 27, 2024 Saturday - Thursday | 5 nights

Mindfulness for Everyone

8 CE Credits. Mindfulness offers us tools to develop our capacity to pay attention, regulate emotions, and cultivate states of lovingkindness, compassion, and even-mindedness. Mindfulness can be practiced in a variety of ways—from focused attention to wide open, spacious, natural awareness. Over time, one can access states of profound well-being in both silent meditation and everyday life. Rooted in the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, this retreat focuses on practical applications of mindfulness and is open to people of all experience levels and backgrounds.

Diana Winston

Diana Winston

Carol Cano

Carol Cano

Alex Haley

Alex Haley

Gullu Singh

Gullu Singh

Vadan Tereza Ritter

Vadan Tereza Ritter

Retreat On-Land

June 28 - July 4, 2024 Friday - Thursday | 6 nights

Finding Refuge in Belonging: Annual BIPOC Retreat

Open to all self-identified BIPOC. Throughout this BIPOC retreat, we will gain insight into the 10 Paramis—the perfections or attainments of heart and mind—which will guide us as a map for the recovery and reclamation of a culture of belonging and wisdom. These are qualities for navigating life, not just guidelines for meditation, and they are said to be what the Buddha was cultivating in earlier lifetimes as he slowly developed into one who could awaken fully and show others the way to freedom.

Noliwe Alexander

Noliwe Alexander

Leslie Booker

Leslie Booker

Gullu Singh

Gullu Singh

Margarita Loinaz

Margarita Loinaz

Jonathan Relucio

Jonathan Relucio

July

Retreat On-Land

July 5 - July 14, 2024 Friday - Sunday | 9 nights

The Four Noble Truths and Dependent Origination: Are They Still Applicable?

The Buddha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths and Dependent Origination were formulated more than 2600 years ago in a social environment that was radically different from that of today’s “Information Age.” Are they still functional and useful in the West in the 21st Century? This retreat will be an opportunity to explore these classical teachings and their related practices, and to discover whether they are indeed effective in illuminating our hearts and minds and in leading us to liberation.

Ajahn Amaro

Ajahn Amaro

Ajahn Nyaniko

Ajahn Nyaniko

Jill Satterfield

Jill Satterfield

Ralph Steele

Ralph Steele

Retreat On-Land

Saturday, July 13 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Home is Here, Refuge is Now: An Asian American Gathering

Open to all with Asian heritage (Central, East, North, South, Southeast, and West Asian heritage). This daylong gathering offers people of Asian heritage an opportunity to deepen their relationship to the Dharma in a supportive community. Inspired by Rev. Liên’s book Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path and Chenxing’s book Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists, our daylong will weave together meditation, chanting, conversation, and other practices in order to cultivate the possibility that “home is here, refuge is now.”

Rev. Liên Shutt

Rev. Liên Shutt

Chenxing Han

Chenxing Han

Retreat On-Land

July 15 - July 18, 2024 Monday - Thursday | 3 nights

Tenderness Retreat: Compassion for Self and All Beings

A heart that can stay open and present in the face of dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction) is one that is well-trained in compassion. Beginning with instruction designed to ease the nervous system and soften the barriers to a tender, open heart, we will learn the ancient radiating method of brahmavihāra practice, which opens the heart of compassion towards all beings, including oneself. It is a gentle but powerful approach to compassion practice suitable for newer and seasoned practitioners alike.

Kate Munding

Kate Munding

Gullu Singh

Gullu Singh

JD Doyle

JD Doyle

Retreat Online Hybrid

July 19 - July 28, 2024 Friday - Sunday | Audit (broadcast only)

July Insight Meditation Retreat

The emphasis during this retreat will be on the continuity of awareness in all activities, which stabilizes and balances the mind. Relaxed acceptance of our moment-to-moment experience will become the platform for investigation and wisdom. Particular attention will be paid to the attitudes in the mind that condition our understanding. This retreat is suitable for both beginner and experienced meditators, and we welcome people from all life experiences, backgrounds, and communities.

Kamala Masters

Kamala Masters

Tara Mulay

Tara Mulay

Vance Pryor

Vance Pryor

Winnie Nazarko

Winnie Nazarko

Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein

Retreat On-Land Hybrid

July 19 - July 28, 2024 Friday - Sunday | 9 nights

July Insight Meditation Retreat

The emphasis during this retreat will be on the continuity of awareness in all activities, which stabilizes and balances the mind. Relaxed acceptance of our moment-to-moment experience will become the platform for investigation and wisdom. Particular attention will be paid to the attitudes in the mind that condition our understanding. This retreat is suitable for both beginner and experienced meditators, and we welcome people from all life experiences, backgrounds, and communities.

Kamala Masters

Kamala Masters

Tara Mulay

Tara Mulay

Vance Pryor

Vance Pryor

Winnie Nazarko

Winnie Nazarko

Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein

Walt Opie

Walt Opie

Retreat On-Land

July 29 - August 4, 2024 Monday - Sunday | 6 nights

The Spirit of Insight, Dharma & Awakening: Led by SF Insight Dharma Center Teachers

The essence of Buddhist practice is embodying the Dharma experientially. In this retreat we will use mindfulness meditation to study our experiential reality within all our activities, including meditation, movement, eating, resting, and listening. When we are present and investigate our experiential reality moment by moment, insight arises, and the Dharma reveals itself within our body, heart, and mind. As the living, embodied truth unfolds, we awaken to the Buddha within and discover the depth and breadth of our own human potential.

John Martin

John Martin

Anushka Fernandopulle

Anushka Fernandopulle

Eugene Cash

Eugene Cash

Howard Cohn

Howard Cohn

Pamela Weiss

Pamela Weiss

Victoria Cary

Victoria Cary

August

Retreat On-Land

August 5 - August 10, 2024 Monday - Saturday | 5 nights

Young Adult Insight Meditation Retreat

Come practice silent mindfulness and Insight Meditation in community with your peers. Give yourself a break from constant overstimulation and external demands as we create a supportive space for cultivating greater calm, spaciousness, and presence. Together we will explore the ancient practices of guided and silent sitting, walking, and heart meditations, along with movement, teacher meetings, and Dharma talks. Over the course of the  week, we will extend these practices until the entire day is one of steady, continuous awareness.

Matthew Brensilver

Matthew Brensilver

Cara Lai

Cara Lai

Vinny Ferraro

Vinny Ferraro

Pam Dunn

Pam Dunn

Hakim Tafari

Hakim Tafari